CAP21 Presents THE USHER'S BALL 5/6

On May 6th, CAP21 (Collaborative Arts Project 21) will transform its block box theater "The Shop" into Europe during WWI, the backdrop for Fengar Gael's "The Usher's Ball". The play will have a month long run in May, as part of CAP21's Spring/Summer season.

The Usher, serves as narrator and tour guide to the story of Captain Wilfred Blackstone, a former army captain, and Annabelle, a young organist and composer from an affluent London family. They share a mysterious connection that Annabelle struggles to understand.

Sweeping the audience away on a journey, the Usher presents a ghostly tale of love, the futility of war, and the psychological repercussions on a young soldier and the woman who loves him more than life.

The Usher's Ball will run May 6-8, 11-15, 18-22, & 25-27 at 8PM

18 W. 18th St, 6th Floor | NYC

$18 | www.cap21.org

Acting Ensemble:
Lawrence Arancio*, Jennifer Joan Thompson*, Gene Gillette*,Curzon

Dobell*, Linda Larson*, Bonnie Black*, Michael Hicks*, Stephen Bel

Davies*, Nick Cianfrogna*, Adam Covalt, Jake Green, Ronan Babbitt

Stage Manager: Beth Stegman*

Production Manager: Jackee Terbay

Stage Manager: Beth Stegman*

Production Manager: Jackee Terbay

Creative Team:

Scenic Design: Shoko Kambara

Costume Design: Arnulfo Maldonado

Lighting Design: Greg Goff

Incidental Music and Sound Design by Shane Rettig

Assistant Director: Tim Chaffee

Music Director: Will Aronson

Dialects: Susan Cameron

*Appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association. Equity Approved Showcase.

FENGAR GAEL (Playwright)
Ms. Gael's plays include Touch of Rapture, The Orchid Lover, Opaline, Beggar at the Feast,
The Spell Caster, and Island of Outcasts. She has had workshops and productions at various theatres including the New York Stage and Film Company, The SundancePlaywrights Lab, MultiStages, The Abingdon Theatre, Collaborative Arts Project 21,MultiStages, the InterAct Theatre Of Philadelphia, the Utah Shakespearean Festival, New Jersey Repertory, Playwrights Theatre Of New Jersey, the Seanachai Theatre Of Chicago, the Kitchen Dog Theatre Of Dallas and the Salt Lake Acting Company. She is a recipient of the Arnold Weissberger Award, the Stanley Drama Award, the TheatreFest Playwriting Award, the National Children's Theatre Festival Award, and the Playwrights First Award, as well as commissions from South Coast Repertory, New Jersey Repertory, the InterAct Theatre Of Philadelphia, the Salt Lake Acting Company, and a playwriting fellowship from the California Arts Council. Her play, Devil Dog Six, won the Craig Noel Award for Outstanding New Play presented by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. The Island of No Tomorrows was selected as one of six plays from over 600 submissions for a staged reading at the International Playwrights Festival at The Warehouse Theatre in England and is a current finalist in the Repertorio Espanol MetLife Nuestra Voces Playwriting Competition. Drink Me was produced this past September at the Moxie Theatre in residence at the La Jolla Playhouse. Ms Gael is currently working with the composer, Dennis McCarthy, on a musical, Soul on Vinyl.

Michael Barakiva (Director)
Michael Barakiva is an Armenian/Israeli director based in New York City. He has worked in New York and around the country, developing new works and staging classics. Most notably, he has directed the premieres of Wendy Wasserstein's Welcome To My Rash and Third at Theatre J in Washington, D.C., UP by Bridget Carpenter at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and The Seagull by Anton Chekhov at the Blue Heron. Most recently, he directed the premiere of Booksmart by Jennifer Joan Thompson at Studio Tisch, a workshop of Mimi Quillin's Degage at The Flea Theater, and String Theory at the Flamboyan, which he conceived and co-authored with Sarah Braunstein and Amy Boyce Holtcamp.

Michael is the Resident Director of the Lake George Theater Lab. He has directed readings or workshops at the Roundabout Theater, Arena Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival, ACT, New York Theater Workshop, New Dramatists, Ars Nova and the Rattlestick Theater. He was also featured on an episode of MTV's MADE, in which he coached two high school students through the process of writing, directing and producing a play. He is working on his first full-length play, currently titled Work. Awards/Affiliations: Phil Killian Fellow at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Drama League Summer Fellowship, David Merrick Prize in Drama, Lincoln Center Directors' Lab. Education: The Juilliard School (Andrew W. Mellon Directing Fellow); Vassar College. Proud member of SDC. Upcoming: The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl at Syracuse Stage.

Dennis McCarthy (Composer)
Dennis McCarthy is a seven-time Emmy nominee, and won the award for his work writing the main title to "Deep Space Nine" and again for the score to the episode, "Unification, Part 1" from "Star Trek: the Next Generation." He also recently jumped into theatre to work for South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, CA, composing music for "Of Mice And Men," "Much Ado About Nothing," "On The Jump," "The Dumb Show, "Dicken's Christmas Carol," "The Beard Of Avon" - the premier of the Amy Freed play, "Getting Frankie Married, Afterwards" by Horton Foote, "The Only Child" by Quincy Long and most recently, "An Italian Straw Hat" by John Strand.

One of the most in-demand composers for films and television, Dennis McCarthy has spent his life in and around music. One of the musicians he met in his early years was Glen Campbell who asked Dennis to join him as a keyboardist. As Glen's fame grew, he needed an ‘on the road' arranger/conductor and McCarthy took on the challenge of a musical self-education and the mentoring of many wonderful musician/ arrangers.The association with Campbell, led to McCarthy's first television work, acting as the musical coordinator on the long running "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" variety show. Dennis also served as musical director for three seasons of "The Barbara Mandrell Show." He went on to become Alex North's scoring assistant, orchestrating North's score to "Wise Blood," before McCarthy embarked on his own composing career. Nelson Riddle became another source of inspiration; it was Nelson who suggestEd McCarthy spend more time composing original music so as to develop a catalogue of his own works. McCarthy spent four years on "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour," working and learning from Marty Paich as well as Ray Charles and Earl Brown.

An opportunity to compose a film score in England opened doors for McCarthy when he returned to Hollywood, giving him experience in orchestral writing while also giving him a feature film credit that created new opportunities in Hollywood. One of them led to "Enos," a spin-off of "The Dukes of Hazzard," which McCarthy began to compose in 1981. A fistful of TV scores for Warner Bros followed included "V: The Final Battle," the new incarnation of "The Twilight Zone," "Dynasty," "McGyver," and a few movies-of-the-week like "Sam Houston: The Legend Of The Texans" and "Sworn To Silence." With George Doering, McCarthy composed the music for a series called "Houston Knights," which led to an assignment scoring the first of the two-hour "Police Story" shows. McCarthy was hired as one of the regular composers on "Star Trek: The Next Generation", and since then has contributed music to all the subsequent Trek series, including scoring the seventh Star Trek movie, "Generations" McCarthy's musical versatility hasn't stayed still for episodic television, however - he has scored a number of feature films and made-for-TV movies, including "Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story", "McHale's Navy", "Letters from a Killer", and several mini-series based on the popular novels by Danielle Steele.

Cast Bios

LAWRENCE ARANCIO is an actor, director, writer and teacher. He has appeared in over thirty plays regionally and in New York, including Drawer Boy, Awake and Sing!, School for Scandal, Otherwise Engaged, Ivanov, The Nerd, The Normal Heart, The House of Blue Leaves, Good and Table Manners. His most recent directing credits include Yellowman and A Different Moon at Penguin Rep, as well as Pages and The Trouble with Doug, two musicals presented at CAP21. His film work includes Extreme Measures and Saving Shiloh. On TV, he guest starred on "Law & Order" (three times), "Law and Order SVU," "The Practice," and "Party of Five" and had recurring roles on "Total Security" and "As the World Turns." He currently teaches acting and is the Chair of the Acting department at CAP21. He has been married to the actress Ann Dowd for a long time and they have two wonderful children.

Bonnie Black CAP21: debut. Theatre: work in New York Includes "Our First Christmas" with HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre's Festival of Holiday Plays; "The Fan Tan King" directed by Tisa Chang for the NY International Fringe Festival; Horton Foote's "The Roads to Home" at the 78th Street Theatre Lab; the one-woman show "From My Lady's Diary" at La Maison Francaise; "The Legacy Codes" with Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. Resident Company member of Adrian Hall's Trinity Square Repertory Company; company member of the Alley Theatre (notably Regina in the production and tour of "Another Part of the Forest") and the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (notably Kate Nickleby in the 8 ½ hour production of "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby"). Guest artist with regional and stock theatres throughout the country... The Shakespeare Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Contemporary American Theatre Festival Festival, Crossroads Theatre Company, L.A. Theatre Works, Capital Repertory Theatre, Studio Arena, Peterborough Players, Vineyard Playhouse...among others. Television: work includes "Law & Order," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Another World," "The Edge of Night," recurring on "Loving," "Life Among the Lowly" (directed by Adrian Hall for the PBS Visions Series), and "The Grimke Sisters" for PBS. Commercials: on camera and radio.

GENE GILLETTE Mr. Gillette is thrilled to be in his first production with CAP21 and his third with Director Michael Barakiva. He is honored to be a part of such an exciting production. Past credits: Three time Ovation Award winner for: Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire at Theatreworks, Bobby Reyburn in Coyote on a Fence and Padraic in Lieutenant of Inishmore at Curious Theatre Company. Regionally: Pale in Burn This at Shakespeare Santa Cruz; the title role in Hamlet at The Denver Civic Theatre; Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and Oliver in As You Like It at The Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C., and the title role in Macbeth at Theatreworks. He has also worked with The Shakespeare Theatre Of New Jersey, The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C., Roundhouse Theatre and The Colorado Shakespeare Theatre. He holds an M.F.A. in Classical Acting from The Shakespeare Theatre's A.C.A. at George Washington University.

Michael Hicks (Dr. Sydney Pearlman) has been involved with CAP21 since 1994 as a student, faculty member and performer. His recent credits include My Fair Lady and James Joyce's The Dead (Capital Rep), Ring of Fire (Flat Rock Playhouse), Outlaws and Angels (Florida Studio Theatre), Smoke on the Mountain Homecoming (Cape Fear Regional Theatre), Show Boat (Depot Theatre), and Pump Boys and Dinettes (Swine Palace & Ground Up Productions). Michael will return to The Weston Playhouse This summer for his thirteenth season and then spends his fall at Merry-Go-Round Playhouse.

Jennifer Joan Thompson: Broadway: Dividing the Estate (Lincoln Center Theatre). Other New York Credits include: Rockberry: The last One Man Show (a play) at The Brick, Gallathea at HERE, and Measure for Measure, House of Blue Leaves, and Holiday (all at NYU/TSOA). Regionally, she has performed in Touch(ed) at the Pioneer Theatre and Bloodline: The Children of Argos and Julius Caesar at The Hanger Theatre. On Television, Jennifer has been seen on The Good Wife, Guiding Light, and All My Children and has been in workshops at MTC, CSC, TFANA, and MCC. She holds a BA in History from Yale University and an MFA from NYU/ TSOA's Graduate Acting Program.

Linda Marie Larson (Helen): Broadway: Deuce by Terrence McNally (s/b & perf'd, w/ Angela Lansbury, dir. by Michael Blakemore); Jackie: An American Life; Mornings at Seven (s/b, dir. by Daniel Sullivan). Off Broadway: Anon (Atlantic Theater Company); Karla (Culture Project); Bright Ideas (MCC Theater); Five Women Wearing the Same Dress by Alan Ball (MCC Theater); The Food Chain (Westside Arts, dir. by Robert Falls); Machinal (NYSF/Naked Angels, dir. by Michael Greif). Other NYC: The Seagull (Round Table Ensemble, dir. by Michael Barakiva); Little Eyolf (Century Center Theatre). Regional: Scrooge in Rouge (ReVision Theatre, dir. By Michael Barakiva); House Arrest by Anna Deavere Smith (Mark Taper Forum); The Smell of the Kill (Cleveland Playhouse); The Servant of Two Masters (Hartford Stage); Three Tall Women (Pittsburgh Public Theatre). Film: Just Another Story; G.

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